duplication
by AGENT Kuma-chan
Summary: Take me near the asteroid, Pidge had said. We'll be safe, she had said. Keith wasn't sure why he still listened to her sometimes. Hopefully they could fix their spaceship and get out.


**Title: **duplication

**Characters/Pairings:** Keith, Pidge

**A/N:** Written for the Roads Untravelled Kidge zine! It was a lot of fun writing these two and having them bump off one another. This is a bit of an in-between seasons piece, a missing scene.

**Summary:** _Take me near the asteroid, Pidge had said. We'll be safe, she had said. Keith wasn't sure why he still listened to her sometimes. Hopefully they could fix their spaceship and get out._

…

…

…

…

"Almost done?" Keith crouched down next to the command panel, his hands hanging loosely off his knees. It was a little strange doing this now, for various reasons—he was a little taller, for one. For two, it had been two years since he'd last done this.

"Almost!" A pair of sneakers wiggled happily from underneath a buzzing machine. At least, he hoped it was happy and not a panicked response to the heavy metal object squishing his friend. After hearing a few clunks and a soft curse, the feet slowly pulled out, revealing a very grimy and dusty Pidge. "We really need to dust under there."

"Probably." Keith grimaced, reaching onto the command panel to grab the towel. At least this explained why she had him search the small ship for one. "Will it run?"

"Thanks!" Taking off her glasses, she rubbed them clean as she considered his question. "Soon—I reconnected a few things and—" There was a soft splutter, the lights flickered briefly, and Pidge's smile dropped a notch. "Ok, scratch that. I might have to go under a few more times."

"That's what you said an hour ago." Keith shook his head and stood up. Looking out the main window, he sighed at the empty expanse of space ahead of them. Somehow, that was always the case. Whether he was trapped on an asteroid for two years, lost in his lion, losing the others and their lions—the ridiculously big and complicated space full of beings to protect was somehow always empty when he needed them to give a hand back.

Probably for the best anyways. Last time someone had tried to help them, they had also tried to sell them to the empire. Not an experience he was looking forward to repeating. "Once we get this fixed, we should just head back."

"Huh?" Pidge stood up, gripping her towel tightly. "I thought we were going to the edge of the Quantum Abyss."

"You do know I spent two years there, right?" Keith pointed out dryly. It was a little funny how much shorter she was; he had always been taller but now he felt like a giant. "And I was lucky it was _only_ two years."

"Well, yeah, that's _why_ we're going there." Pidge pouted, crossing her arms. Any anger or even power in her stance was lost by the fact that only her glasses were clean and the rest of her face was a black, sooty mess. With popcorn on it.

Yeah, they definitely needed to clean down there. Allura's pet mice were fun, but Keith wasn't too keen to discover just what other rodents existed in the universe. "We're going only close enough for you to get the data, no more than that."

"Good enough!" Pidge grinned, raising the towel once more to wipe her face. Before he could stop her, she smeared it even worse, until she looked almost like a modern art exhibit. Hanging it on her shoulder, she sat down. "Break time! Did you find any snacks?"

He stared at her moment, debating whether or not to tell her about her face. Well, she'd be going back under anyways soon enough and she couldn't really get much worse than that. Probably. Grabbing a black bag off his seat, he settled down on the floor next to her. "Just a few—we need to ration our goods until we can move again."

Pidge's hand was already halfway into the bag. "Yeah, I guess you're right." She pulled out a purple bag with a strange green giraffe-cow hybrid on it. Without hesitation, she popped it open and munched on neon-green striped things that he hoped were chips. "Ahhh, that hits the spot."

Did it? Even after all their time out here, he was just as surprised by the food as he was when they first came out here. Gingerly, he pulled out a blinding yellow bag, full of Cheetos. Cheetos with brown spots. They didn't taste anything at all like cheese and he wondered for a moment if they were actually made out of some space-cheetah. "Better than nothing."

"Don't be like that!" Pidge head-butted his arm before stealing one of his Cheetos. "Ohh, that's an interesting flavour."

"Hey!" Frowning, he tried to grab one of hers in retaliation, but she kept yanking the bag out of reach.

"You don't even like them!" She batted his hands away, more fluid and accurate than he'd expected. Keith had remembered her clumsier, only graceful with a screen and a toolbelt. "Your arms are so much longer now!"

"But not long enough." Giving up, he returned to his now heavily guarded bag.

"Really? Is it because you're half Galra? Will you grow even more?" Pidge poked at his arm now, her food discarded to the side. She'd done this before, when he'd first returned, but somehow the topic never tired her. Her hands slowly inched along his arm, pressing and prodding each muscle. "You're going to need new clothes."

"I already need new clothes." Keith rolled his eyes, remembering just how little of his wardrobe fit when he returned. Even his favourite jacket didn't, leading to an awkward tear that left Lance in hysterical laughter.

"I wonder how long you'll live—I mean, I thought Lotor and his family were immortal because of the quintessence, but his nanny's still alive too." Pidge sighed, resting her cheek on his arm. "And you're half-human too; I need to study biology."

"Really? Do you mean literally immortal or just very—" Keith paused, processing what Pidge had just said. He whipped his face to hers, incredulous eyes wide. "His_ nanny_?"

"His nanny," she confirmed, a solemn nod. "She who raised him in the ways of the Galara."

"His nanny," Keith repeated, the word still funny and strange to hear. The Galara had nannies? _Lotor_ had a nanny? It was weird to think of him as a child, listening obediently or even getting punished. "What's she like?"

"Strict?" Pidge shrugged, tossing her hands up uncertainly. "You should ask Hunk, she taught him."

He wasn't sure if that was even more of a surprise than finding out he was effectually immortal and Lotor still had his babysitter. "Hunk? Really?"

"He really liked it." Pidge bit her lip, before retracting her words. "He sorta liked it and he's never going back."

"I don't think that's called liking it." Keith snorted and after a moment, Pidge joined in, hunching over as she laughed.

"You should have seen his face, though." She wiped her eyes, her fingers blurring the tear streaks and oil into a single wet mess.

Keith resisted the urge to tell her to look at hers—he'd take a discrete photo later. It almost seemed like her face got worse with every second and he wanted the maximum impact. "Next time."

She shook her chip bag over her mouth, dropping the last of the crumbs before discarding the bag. Within seconds, she was back onto her creeper seat. Stretching her arms in front of her, she announced, "Break time is over."

Keith nodded, taking another bite of his Cheeto. When she scrunched her brow, nodding at his bag, he shrugged. "I'm not really doing anything."

"…" Pidge opened her mouth and then closed it. He could almost see the argument running through her mind, her hand raising and dropping as she tried out different ideas before finally giving up with a sigh. "Yeah, I guess so." As he smiled, she pouted, staring at him with narrowed eyes and puffed up cheeks. "For now."

Again, her threat would have been more convincing if she didn't now have cheeto streaks added into her Picasso face. More than getting the best shot, he really, really wanted to clean her face. Before he could say anything, she dived back under the console panel. "For now!"

Her feet were the only indication of progress and he watched them as he ate. Tapping fast meant she was searching for something or doing routine work, while slow tapping indicated something difficult had come up. It was comforting, almost, reminding him of his time at the castle, his time as a paladin. Time had worn the hectic memories into fond ones. He had half forgotten his disastrous leadership until Lance had kindly reminded him of just how bad it was.

Somehow, they even had it on video and he wasn't sure if the black lion had betrayed him or Hunk and Pidge just hacked into every camera they could find and then some.

"Wrench," Pidge ordered, holding her hand out from other the panel.

Digging through her toolbox, he grabbed the first wrench he saw. "This one?"

She wrapped her hand around it, feeling the head, before dropping it with a clang. "Bigger one."

"Bigger…" he dug through the tool box, nails and sockets before finding another wrench. "3/4?"

"Yep." Her hand disappeared immediately, and he heard a soft clanging, a swear, and then a sharp click. "Try the command panel."

"…the command panel?" He stared at her feet accusingly, as though the guilt could travel up her spine. "You broke the command panel?"

"Technically, you didn't even know about it till now, so it was never broken," Pidge retorted, her foot tapping impatiently. "Did you check?"

"You know that doesn't make sense." Keith went over to the control panel, tapping out various instructions. Life support, check. Docking, check. Flight—well, technically the engines were still down but the instructions worked. "It seems fine so far. Though the engines are still not working."

"That's expected." She slid out once more and stood up, dusting her hands on her pants. "I can do some calibrations here."

Keith eyed her dirty fingers with a grimace and handed her yet another towel. He was almost terrified to look into her workshop, to see just what state she left it. Her black fingerprints were already dotting her pants, the edges of the table, the bag of chips she'd discarded. "Not with those hands."

Pidge's brow rose even as she accepted the towel. "Didn't know you were such a clean freak."

"Only compared to you," he replied dryly, watching as she ineffectually cleaned her hands. It had gone from funny to—no, it was still funny. It would probably never stop being funny, but they had to get a move on. "Let me do it."

"Yes, mom." Pidge blinked as he took the towel. "Is this because you spent two years with your mom?"

"What?" Keith shot her a glare, rubbing her fingers a little harder than he needed to. "No."

"Oh, come on, you were together for two years, you sure you didn't pick this up from her?" Pidge tried to suppress her giggles as he rubbed her fingers; she had always been a little ticklish there. "Did—ha—she do this to—ha—you?"

"She's not that type of mom." When Pidge gave him an expectant look, he sighed. "We…talked a lot. About dad. Home. What she did. Myself." He paused between his points, releasing a newly cleaned finger with each one until finally he let go of her hands. "There, all done."

"Ohhh, nice." She wiggled them in front of her before turning to the control panel. Her fingers danced on the keyboard as she punched code after code. "Did you really just talk for two years?"

He rubbed the back of his neck—even if they'd done nothing else, the talking would have been more than worth it. _Mom_ was more than a word now; an image, a feeling was attached to it, similar but not quite what he thought of with _Dad_. "We trained a lot—after we fought off the wolves, we had to make a shelter and find food but then—"

"Wait, wait, wait." Pidge stopped typing, squinting at him. "Did you just say wolves?"

"Huh?" Keith frowned, trying to remember the exact species name. "They weren't earth wolves, they were…uh…"

Pidge took a step toward him, her eyes sparkling. "A pack of them?"

"Yeah?" Keith backed up, unnerved by how long she had been staring at him without blinking. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Holy cow, that is _amazing_!" Pidge rocked back and forth on her feet, pumping her fists excitedly. "You're like a real-life ranger."

"Ranger?" Keith bit his lip. "Like a park ranger?"

"Oh please, nothing that normal. It's a class in Monsters and Mana and you basically lived it." Pidge lightly bounced up and down as she returned to her keyboard, her hands flying as fast as her mouth did. "You found food and fought off monsters and basically survived in the woods—your stats would be so high if you made a character sheet with this."

It was like she was speaking Greek, her mind travelling from one idea to the next quicker than he could keep up. He held up his hand. "Wait, Monsters and Mana"

"It's a game. Corran played it with us—oh right, you weren't there." Pidge hummed and he could see the gears in her head churning. "It's like an rpg, but we make everything up."

"I somehow feel that is no different than usual," he snorted and she joined in after glowering at him for a moment.

"Yeah, I mean, sure—especially when we can't read the text because it's an old game and there's like a gazillion different languages in space, but it's a bit different." Pidge chuckled again. "We make up our characters and play a story that Corran's created. It's a lot of fun."

"Really?" He leaned against the wall, watching her face light up as she explained.

By now fixing the engines were automatic to her and she barely paid attention to what she typed. "Yeah, like Lance was this not-so-silent assassin and he kept setting off traps, Allura kept injuring herself because she picked an elf and they're…kinda weak. And Shiro." Pidge doubled over laughing, her hand hitting the keyboard before he could stop her.

Keith quickly inspected the keyboard before sighing with relief. They'd just fixed it. If it broke again, they might as well just wait for rescue. Distracted, he asked, "What did he do?"

"You can pick any character, any class, anything in this game. _Literally anything_ and he picks a _paladin._ He picks himself." Pidge stopped to take a breath, her cheeks creased from all the laughter. "Not once, but thrice."

"Thrice?" Even if he'd never played the game before, that didn't sound right.

"He died because of Allura's mice and then an attack. So we let him pick a new character. _Any character_. Shiro just pretended to be his twin brother, Jiro."

Keith winced. "I thought he had more imagination than that. And Jiro? Really?"

"I don't think he even changed his backstory—he was supposed to be the only survivor! Then again, it's _Shiro,_" Pidge guffawed, as though it explained everything. And in a way, it did. Suddenly, she fell silent, staring out the main window into deep space. Her fingers stilled, her feet stopped moving, and Pidge was quiet in a way he rarely saw her. "He wasn't Shiro, though."

Two blades clashed in the chambers of his memory, a mockery of Shiro's face twisting with insults and lies. That was not Shiro. That was never Shiro. Keith firmly shook his head. "No, he wasn't."

"He just…he just felt like him. Can you even clone that?" Pidge rubbed her arm, looking small and uncomfortable. The rug had been pulled from under all their feet and they were still trying to land. "A person's goodness? Their personality?"

"I don't think so." Keith looked at his hands, at the human skin hiding Galra blood. Just what did his DNA say? What was encoded in it? His mother's impatience? His father's solitude? Were they things he'd inherited or things he learned, things his own clones would have or not? "That's…that's not how it works, right?"

"I don't know." Pidge stared at the floor, as though the answers were in the endlessly repeated whorls. Her fingers curled around the table. "Maybe? I…I really should have taken more biology."

They were different, he wanted to say, but he remembered the clone's smile, the way he laughed with all of his body as though it was exploding out of him whenever Lance did something stupid. His hand, firm and gentle, as it rested on Keith's shoulder, telling him to make a choice.

They weren't the same, he wanted to say, but the words were caught in his throat, unlike the clone's, who always had a strategy ready, who was patient enough to read the battle and find the changing tide. Or maybe it had just felt that way, that he had seen what he wanted to in the clone.

Even in the end, just before he died, Keith couldn't be certain if the clone had spared him. If some part of Shiro had woken up beyond the Galra's control and did the right thing, even if it was for the last time.

"The Black Lion liked him," Keith finally said, because it was the only truth they knew. The lions always picked their master and the Black Lion had picked the clone.

"Yeah, he did." Pidge pressed her forehead against the cool control panel, taking a deep breath. In, out, Keith matched his own to her rhythm. "That counts for something."

"Yeah." Keith gripped her shoulder, smiling at her when she looked up.

"Another thing your mom taught you?" Pidge asked, squeezing his hand before straightening up. "You're usually more awkward than that."

"It has been two years," Keith countered, letting go.

"Yeah but, you were all alone on that rock." Pidge went back to typing, a sly grin on her face. "And you're Keith."

"And you're Pidge and I don't think even five years will help with your height."

"Low blow!" Pidge gave a triumphant final tap and crossed her arm. "Engines are working!"

"Finally!" Keith manned his station, setting the coordinates for the auto-pilot. "Hopefully we get back before Hunk sends a search party."

"It might be too late for that." Pidge pulled up more screens, double checking their logs. "You know, I kinda missed this." She gave him an awkward smile. "Talking to you like this, I mean. And everything else."

Keith rubbed his neck. It was strange, but one thing his solo missions had taught him was that while he did like being alone, he had also surprisingly enjoyed teamwork. Lance's inane chatter on the line, Hunk and Pidge geeking out over the latest tech, Allura warring between caution and aggression. "Me too."

"And since we have so much to catch up on, what if we go to the—"

"Pidge, not even for you." Keith shot down the suggestion.

"It was worth a try."


End file.
